7 ms·

Radicle is an open source, peer-to-peer code collaboration stack built on Git

155 points by cimnine 2y ago

gnabgib 2y ago
HN Discussions: 1 month ago[1][2](105+94 points, 16+10 comments), 2 months ago[0](807 points, 284 comments) [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39600810 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39600810 [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39837117 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39837117 [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39868504 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39868504
- cimnine 2y ago
  Thanks. I wasn't aware this was submitted recently already.
vaylian 2y ago
How does Radicle handle the following situation?: A non-programmer user wants to submit a bug report. The user has previous experience with submitting bug reports on GitHub and they would not mind creating a new account to submit a bug report on Radicle. Can the user submit an issue on Radicle without running their own node?
- vinnyhaps 2y ago
  At the moment there isn't any mechanism for that kind of drive-by action. The current mechanism for creating an issue requires that a Git reference is created (the COBs structure) for replicating by other nodes. Perhaps in the future, a user could use a web interface for a Radicle node and they post it directly from their browser. Some questions about that would the verifiability of that action though. Definitely some food for thought here!
- contrarian1234 2y ago
  Do non programmer submit bug reports on Github...? It must be a vanishingly small minority. I've only seen that at on Mozilla repos with their useless middle managers
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - codetrotter 2y ago
    > Do non programmer submit bug reports on Github...? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Sometimes they flip out about GitHub and go on Reddit instead and write something like this: https://www.reddit.com/r/github/comments/1at9br4/i_am_new_to_github_and_i_have_lots_to_say/ https://www.reddit.com/r/github/comments/1at9br4/i_am_new_to...
    - scoot 2y ago
      How on earth did that entitled whiney post get 4.6K upvotes, and in /r/github no less?
      - codetrotter 2y ago
        The upvotes are mainly because people found it hilarious and it became a bit of a meme on multiple subreddits like for example on r/ProgrammerHumor
  - dmos62 2y ago
    I've had minimally technical users participate in github issue threads, and it can be very valuable when they do.
  - delfinom 2y ago
    Yes? There are plenty of individuals that are technical enough to handle a sign up form and a issue form but not programmers. The bar isn't that high lol. But then again my username is all non-software engineers :shrug:
  - bonki 2y ago
    To my surprise, I have seen this more often than I would have expected (expectation = zero). It's not super common but not unheard of.
mikl 2y ago
They keep advertising this thing on here, but they never explain what the big benefit is. Everyone can already self-host Gitea or Gitlab, and Git repos are super easy to clone, so what’s the point of all the peer to peer stuff? ie. what real world problem is it supposed to solve?
- vouaobrasil 2y ago
  According to their documentation "nodes can run on a personal computer without requiring a server". That sounds better than self-hosting to me, which requires the installation of various components like Apache, SQL, PHP, etc. Seems more like bittorrent for code, which sounds like it could actually be useful. Ideally, we would have a solution to collaborate on projects peer-to-peer that handles some basic Github-style stuff without having to use Github at all.
  - hnlmorg 2y ago
    That’s literally what git is designed to do from the outset. That’s why it’s called a decentralised version control system. I’m sure this project brings something new to the table but they’d need a better elevator pitch than “peer-to-peer” to explain that.
    - vouaobrasil 2y ago
      But git is not user-friendly. You have to figure out how to push to people directly, and that isn't obvious to a commoner like myself. It would be great to have a nice front-end like Transmission is for bittorrent that makes the experience seamless.
      - hnlmorg 2y ago
        I agree. However there are already plenty of frontends to git and this isn’t marketed as one of them. Perhaps intentionally because of my earlier point that there are lots of frontends already? But focusing on the p2p aspect doesn’t do any better of a job explaining what this project does.
mtndew4brkfst 2y ago
Seems like a vehicle to try to start another coin network, like Tea.xyz, and it's just burying the lede: See Drips on https://docs.radworks.org/#projects https://docs.radworks.org/#projects I'd first heard of Radicle from this post: https://blog.orhun.dev/open-source-funding-with-ratatui/ https://blog.orhun.dev/open-source-funding-with-ratatui/
- AnarchismIsCool 2y ago
  With the frequency they're on here it feels like a guerilla marketing campaign. Everyone anyways points out they're a crypto scam and then they pop back up a month later and try again.
  - toolz 2y ago
    which part is a scam, again? I see interesting open source software and them funding open source with real world money. If this is what scams look like I hope we see more of them.
    - AnarchismIsCool 2y ago
      It's a bunch of crypto bros aggressively marketing a product with no clear use case. If you ask about how the monetization works they frantically wave their hands. They also have been trying to obfuscate their connections with their radicle now rad coin and keep claiming it's unrelated despite the old naming. Looking forward to the fediverse posts later today, it'll be a good time.
      - vinnyhaps 2y ago
        The Radicle project doesn't involve the crypto token, started by Radworks, in its technology. It's also stated in the FAQ on the website (https://radicle.xyz/faq https://radicle.xyz/faq) that the project is funded by Radworks and also provides a link to the funding page. I, for one, work on Radicle and what I care about is the data sovereignty and local-first code collaboration. We're building on top of Git to provide a local-first, extensible collaboration experience -- avoiding walled gardens like GitHub :) As a project team, we only posted once on HN when we were announcing our v1.0 release candidates. The other two posts have been from other people outside of the organisation, so it's nice to see there's interest in the project but don't blame us for that kind of hype :')
Alifatisk 2y ago
Guys, I know xyz domains are cheap to get but I highly suggest to not use them for anything serious. The XYZ TLD has a very bad reputation and will lead to situations where your domain gets flagged, emails from the domain appears in the spam folder etc.
- FireInsight 2y ago
  I didn't know it was cheap or had bad rep—it just seemed cool to me and I thought about putting my personal site under that domain. Might have to reconsider.
- miloignis 2y ago
  Honestly, that kinda makes me prefer XYZ for my personal stuff I'm not trying to get reach for, and that I don't want any corporate sheen on. If you're trying to launch a product though, it's something to keep in mind.
- ptman 2y ago
  https://abc.xyz/ https://abc.xyz/
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
nanomonkey 2y ago
Feels like a rebranding of git-ssb (git on Secure Scuttlebutt), but with a coin offering?! Anyways, a good introduction to git-ssb would be this document: https://github.com/hackergrrl/git-ssb-intro https://github.com/hackergrrl/git-ssb-intro
- hiatus 2y ago
  What makes you say this is related to SSB?
  - nanomonkey 2y ago
    From their documentation: "Radicle adopts a local-first, peer-to-peer (P2P) architecture, which draws inspiration from Secure Scuttlebutt (SSB) and Bitcoin’s Lightning Network. Nodes on the Radicle network subscribe to repository data they are interested in, and peers announce updates that in turn trigger fetches for the underlying content. Just like SSB and Lightning, updates are gossiped on the network until they reach all interested peers."

155 points by cimnine 2y ago

HN Discussions: 1 month ago[1][2](105+94 points, 16+10 comments), 2 months ago[0](807 points, 284 comments) [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39600810 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39600810 [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39837117 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39837117 [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39868504 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39868504

cimnine 2y ago
Thanks. I wasn't aware this was submitted recently already.

vaylian 2y ago

How does Radicle handle the following situation?: A non-programmer user wants to submit a bug report. The user has previous experience with submitting bug reports on GitHub and they would not mind creating a new account to submit a bug report on Radicle. Can the user submit an issue on Radicle without running their own node?

vinnyhaps 2y ago
At the moment there isn't any mechanism for that kind of drive-by action. The current mechanism for creating an issue requires that a Git reference is created (the COBs structure) for replicating by other nodes. Perhaps in the future, a user could use a web interface for a Radicle node and they post it directly from their browser. Some questions about that would the verifiability of that action though. Definitely some food for thought here!
contrarian1234 2y ago
Do non programmer submit bug reports on Github...? It must be a vanishingly small minority. I've only seen that at on Mozilla repos with their useless middle managers
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- codetrotter 2y ago
  > Do non programmer submit bug reports on Github...? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Sometimes they flip out about GitHub and go on Reddit instead and write something like this: https://www.reddit.com/r/github/comments/1at9br4/i_am_new_to_github_and_i_have_lots_to_say/ https://www.reddit.com/r/github/comments/1at9br4/i_am_new_to...
  - scoot 2y ago
    How on earth did that entitled whiney post get 4.6K upvotes, and in /r/github no less?
    - codetrotter 2y ago
      The upvotes are mainly because people found it hilarious and it became a bit of a meme on multiple subreddits like for example on r/ProgrammerHumor
- dmos62 2y ago
  I've had minimally technical users participate in github issue threads, and it can be very valuable when they do.
- delfinom 2y ago
  Yes? There are plenty of individuals that are technical enough to handle a sign up form and a issue form but not programmers. The bar isn't that high lol. But then again my username is all non-software engineers :shrug:
- bonki 2y ago
  To my surprise, I have seen this more often than I would have expected (expectation = zero). It's not super common but not unheard of.

mikl 2y ago

They keep advertising this thing on here, but they never explain what the big benefit is. Everyone can already self-host Gitea or Gitlab, and Git repos are super easy to clone, so what’s the point of all the peer to peer stuff? ie. what real world problem is it supposed to solve?

vouaobrasil 2y ago
According to their documentation "nodes can run on a personal computer without requiring a server". That sounds better than self-hosting to me, which requires the installation of various components like Apache, SQL, PHP, etc. Seems more like bittorrent for code, which sounds like it could actually be useful. Ideally, we would have a solution to collaborate on projects peer-to-peer that handles some basic Github-style stuff without having to use Github at all.
- hnlmorg 2y ago
  That’s literally what git is designed to do from the outset. That’s why it’s called a decentralised version control system. I’m sure this project brings something new to the table but they’d need a better elevator pitch than “peer-to-peer” to explain that.
  - vouaobrasil 2y ago
    But git is not user-friendly. You have to figure out how to push to people directly, and that isn't obvious to a commoner like myself. It would be great to have a nice front-end like Transmission is for bittorrent that makes the experience seamless.
    - hnlmorg 2y ago
      I agree. However there are already plenty of frontends to git and this isn’t marketed as one of them. Perhaps intentionally because of my earlier point that there are lots of frontends already? But focusing on the p2p aspect doesn’t do any better of a job explaining what this project does.

mtndew4brkfst 2y ago

Seems like a vehicle to try to start another coin network, like Tea.xyz, and it's just burying the lede: See Drips on https://docs.radworks.org/#projects https://docs.radworks.org/#projects I'd first heard of Radicle from this post: https://blog.orhun.dev/open-source-funding-with-ratatui/ https://blog.orhun.dev/open-source-funding-with-ratatui/

AnarchismIsCool 2y ago
With the frequency they're on here it feels like a guerilla marketing campaign. Everyone anyways points out they're a crypto scam and then they pop back up a month later and try again.
- toolz 2y ago
  which part is a scam, again? I see interesting open source software and them funding open source with real world money. If this is what scams look like I hope we see more of them.
  - AnarchismIsCool 2y ago
    It's a bunch of crypto bros aggressively marketing a product with no clear use case. If you ask about how the monetization works they frantically wave their hands. They also have been trying to obfuscate their connections with their radicle now rad coin and keep claiming it's unrelated despite the old naming. Looking forward to the fediverse posts later today, it'll be a good time.
    - vinnyhaps 2y ago
      The Radicle project doesn't involve the crypto token, started by Radworks, in its technology. It's also stated in the FAQ on the website (https://radicle.xyz/faq https://radicle.xyz/faq) that the project is funded by Radworks and also provides a link to the funding page. I, for one, work on Radicle and what I care about is the data sovereignty and local-first code collaboration. We're building on top of Git to provide a local-first, extensible collaboration experience -- avoiding walled gardens like GitHub :) As a project team, we only posted once on HN when we were announcing our v1.0 release candidates. The other two posts have been from other people outside of the organisation, so it's nice to see there's interest in the project but don't blame us for that kind of hype :')

Alifatisk 2y ago

Guys, I know xyz domains are cheap to get but I highly suggest to not use them for anything serious. The XYZ TLD has a very bad reputation and will lead to situations where your domain gets flagged, emails from the domain appears in the spam folder etc.

FireInsight 2y ago
I didn't know it was cheap or had bad rep—it just seemed cool to me and I thought about putting my personal site under that domain. Might have to reconsider.
miloignis 2y ago
Honestly, that kinda makes me prefer XYZ for my personal stuff I'm not trying to get reach for, and that I don't want any corporate sheen on. If you're trying to launch a product though, it's something to keep in mind.
ptman 2y ago
https://abc.xyz/ https://abc.xyz/

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

nanomonkey 2y ago

Feels like a rebranding of git-ssb (git on Secure Scuttlebutt), but with a coin offering?! Anyways, a good introduction to git-ssb would be this document: https://github.com/hackergrrl/git-ssb-intro https://github.com/hackergrrl/git-ssb-intro

hiatus 2y ago
What makes you say this is related to SSB?
- nanomonkey 2y ago
  From their documentation: "Radicle adopts a local-first, peer-to-peer (P2P) architecture, which draws inspiration from Secure Scuttlebutt (SSB) and Bitcoin’s Lightning Network. Nodes on the Radicle network subscribe to repository data they are interested in, and peers announce updates that in turn trigger fetches for the underlying content. Just like SSB and Lightning, updates are gossiped on the network until they reach all interested peers."